ALBANY — The Alive at Five concert series moved to Times Union Center for the first time on Thursday because of a forecast of severe weather, and '90s pop-rockers Smash Mouth made the most of the venue change by pretending they were big enough to play in an arena again.

While the free concert certainly drew a sizable crowd to the downtown venue, the San Jose, Calif.-based band isn't likely to return to arena status anytime soon, based on their Thursday evening performance.

Of course, Smash Mouth has always been something of a frat-rock party band — even in their heyday — and it quite likely would have been a much more enjoyable concert experience had the show been outdoors under a sunny summer sky in the Corning Preserve's Riverfront Park.

But that wasn't the case, and frontman Steve Harwell and his bandmates served up a show that was littered with f-bombs and other four-letter expletives that were hardly the typical family-friendly fare of the city-sponsored Alive at Five series.

While Harwell was spitting beer into the air and throwing it on the front rows of the crowd, manic keyboardist Michael Klooster was often jumping up and down with wild abandon, providing not only a high level of energy, but also considerable entertainment value, as the band whipped up a decent cover of ? and the Mysterians' vintage garage-rock nugget "Can't Get Enough of You, Baby."

They offered up "Then the Morning Comes" — one of their three Top 40 hits — early on in their show, but followed it with "Come On, Come On" featuring Harwell's pretty lame stab at rapping. "Story of My Life" was one of their better efforts, a funk groove paired with a stadium-ready, shout-along chorus.

These guys know what they do best, and for the most part, they stick to it. The songs are built around simple choruses, and vocalist Harwell declares them in brash chant/croak. When they dared to veer into more melodic territory — "Always Gets Her Way" and "Flippin' Out" from their upcoming album "Magic" (their first in six years) — Harwell's vocal shortcomings were glaringly evident. The crowd didn't seem to mind.

Hotwired guitarist Mike Krompass — an obvious Eddie van Halen disciple — fired it up on "Getaway Car" and the unaccompanied metal-esque introduction to the first encore "Let's Rock," a tune that jerked back and forth between reggae and punk. And while the band has had a problem keeping drummers in the fold — five drummers in 18 years — it seems like they've got a keeper in Randy Cooke, even it means that they have to showcase him with two drum solos in a 90-minute show.

They eventually led up to their best known songs — "Walkin' on the Sun," their cover of the Monkees' "I'm a Believer" and a final encore of "All Star" — but their clownish rendition of Van Halen's "Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love" just might have been their best performance of the night.

New Paltz quartet the Dylan Emmet Band kicked off the show with a pretty impressive set of original tunes highlighted by the Steely Dan-ish jazzy-soul groove of "Lost in Transit, Lost in Translation," laced with hip-hop.